nd distress were still smarting in her eyes. Why
should her father depreciate her to their neighbor because she was a
girl? She did not mind Mr. Dalton's opinion of her, but it was hard that
her father should give her no credit for the work that she had done in
the study at his side. Step by step she had kept pace with her brother:
sometimes he had excelled her, sometimes she thought that she was
outstripping him. Now in the hour of his possible success (of which she
would be proud and glad), why should her father seem to undervalue her
powers and her industry? They would never bring her the guerdon that
might fall to Sydney's lot; but she felt that she, too, had a right to
her father's praise.

She had been vaguely hurt during Sydney's absence to find that Mr.
Campion did not seem disposed to allow her to go on working alone with
him. "Wait, my dear, wait," he had said to her, when she came to him as
usual, "let us see how Sydney's examination turns out. If he comes back
to us for another year you can go on with him. If not--well, you are a
girl, it does not matter so much for _you_; and your mother complains
that you do not sit with her sufficiently. Take a holiday just now, we
will go on when Sydney comes back."

But in this, Lettice's first separation from her beloved brother, she
had no heart for a holiday. She would have been glad of hard work to
take her out of herself. She was anxious, sad, _des[oe]uvree_, and if
she had not been taught all her life to look on failure in an
examination as something disgraceful, she would have earnestly hoped
that Sydney might lose the scholarship for which he was competing.

Brooke Dalton saw that his presence was scarcely desired just then, and
took his leave, meditating as he pulled up the river on Lettice's
reddened cheeks and pretty tear-filled eyes. "I suppose she thinks
she'll miss her brother when he goes away," he decided at length, "and
no doubt she will, for a time; but it is just as well--what does a girl
want with all that Latin and Greek? It will only serve to make her
forget to brush her hair and wear a frock becomingly. Of course she's
clever, but I should not care for that sort of cleverness in a
sister--or a wife." He thought again of the girl's soft grey eyes. But
he had a hundred other preoccupations, and her image very soon faded
from his brain.

Lettice ran to the fence to look at the cab, but Mr. Campion turned at
once to the gateway and walked out into